Some tough choices. I don't dislike a single track here. Hmmm. I almost feel like the MM2 and MM3 entries aren't as strong, but that's probably just because I've heard them both so damn much. If I had to pick two more, I'd probably go with TMNT and Matoya, as much as it hurts me to kill off Argolis in the first pass.

Well, I was gonna post with "can I just vote for Bayou Billy 6 times?" but after giving all the tracks a fresh full listen, I discovered another new favorite in Might and Magic: Cave.

Shadow of the Ninja remains an old favorite from my childhood, Dragon Quest's lonely, haunting overworld still conveys how isolated you are in the wide wilderness to this day, Punch Out's fight theme is a study in how a relatively simple, low key track can be incredibly brilliant and engaging, Peloponnesus is rad to the max, Aktemto is super sad the max, and Tetris 3 is super echoing nes goodness to the max.

People love the Battletoads Pause music a lot, and while it's pretty rad they made such a fist pumping beat just for their pause menu, it loops too fast for me to really get into it. Magnet Man is great, but not as great as Snake, and Snake already lost. I just flat don't like Radia Senki's melody. Stinger likewise feels flat and boring.

I'm already a soulless husk, so Lolo didn't change me at all, but I still hate that track precisely BECAUSE it's so Kirby/upbeat and that game is all about being murdered and being frustrated and being murdered while you are frustrated and committing suicide because you're stuck and also frustrated.

alright, alright, I gave Radia another full listen and it sort of grew on me in a "I can imagine walking around pixel forest tiles while grinding gp to max out my equipment for the town I'm at" angle. I still don't think it's better than any of the ones I put before it.

Back when I was a wee lil' fellow, for a few weekends in a row, a friend and I rented Battle of Olympus and played it as long as his parents could stand to allow us to monopolize their TV. I was inordinately popular in my immediate peer group as an aide for certain games because I was the only one who had any working knowledge of the English language. Every night, around 10 or 11, I'd walk back home, humming Peloponnesus' theme all the way, thinking about how goddamned tragic it was that nobody who mattered gave one half of one shit about video games, let alone video game music.